This is Golda Meir's long-awaited personal and moving story of her life. For the first time, we experience through her own words how it happened that this amazing woman, born in Russia and brought up in Milwaukee, became the prime minister of Israel and one of the political giants of our time without ever losing the warmth and informality for which she is justly celebrated. She herself describes her career as Israel's labor minister, foreign minister, and finally prime minister, against the background of her conflicting roles as a wife and as a mother. This personal story of her own life inevitably reflects also the story of Israel itself -- and of its struggle to survive -- culminating in what was for Golda Meir the most desperate period of all, the terrible days of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. - Jacket flap. The former Israeli Prime Minister recounts her life and times, describing her troubled early childhood in Russia, her years in America, her Zionist and socialist activities, and her life in Israel as wife, mother, and key political figure.